Americas Best Value Inn

Thursday, December 7, 2017

The Office of the Public Defender (OPD) in the Lagos State Ministry
of Justice has rescued a 10-year-old girl in the home of Ada Onyejike
Ananaba, founder of the Girl Child Art Foundation (GCAF) — a non- profit
organisation that claims to provide more than 17,000 girls with life
skill programme opportunities.

The ICIR
confirmed that Ananaba had been arrested and would be charged to court,
likely on Wednesday, for maltreating the girl and denying her education
(She had not been attending school since the start of the current
academic session in September.).
The girl was rescued on Tuesday
afternoon by the OPD at Ananaba’s home in Omole, Ikeja, where she has
been subjected to untold hardship and deprivation.
The source said
that although the girl had stopped schooling, she continued taking
Ananaba’s two kids to and from school every day.“She is up as early as 5am sweeping the house and even up till 11pm. You need to see all the marks on her body; horrible!“She gets beaten up by Ananaba all the time; morning beatings are customary. This is a very serious case of human trafficking.”
When
Ananaba brought the girl to Lagos from the eastern part of the country
about three years ago, she enrolled her in public school while her
children were attending private school.
It was alleged that the girl had been doing all the domestic chores and she was constantly beaten by Ananaba.
At the moment, OPD has taken custody of the girl.
Ironically, Ananaba claims to have used her NGO to improve the education and future of vulnerable girls in Nigerian communities.
In an appeal to donors about two months ago, she said: “Our
projects have covered areas such as the use of Art to advocate for
education, promote the sexual reproductive health and development of
girls in and out of schools in Nigeria. Our strength has always been in
the provision of free, friendly training class on various topics,
targeting girls and youth in local communities.\“So
far, your donations have helped us reach about 8,653 girls in 42
schools through our school outreach programmes, pay school fees for six
girls who nearly dropped out of school. Your donations have also helped
in transporting volunteers to the various communities, buy learning
materials for our outreach programs, art materials for our free training
classes, and conduct 1 free basic training on computer skill and
screen-printing summer classes for 35 girls.”
Ananaba is a
graduate of Fine and Applied Arts from the Institute of Management and
Technology Enugu (IMT), Enugu, and holds an M.Sc. in Management of
Development, with specialisation in HIV and AIDS from Van Hall
Larenstein University of Applied Science Wageningen, Netherlands.